3D Modeling/CAD Computer Components

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Make sure you get a professional graphics card - either an AMD FirePro or nVidia Quadro. The hardware and drivers are tailored for CAD/modeling performance instead of gaming performance, and are thus the only officially supported graphics cards for most CAD software.

Though some companies only certify full systems, not individual components (for example, PTC only certifies workstations, not sure about Solidworks, and I haven't heard of Inventor outside of educational anyways...)

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by cadandcookies

Though some companies only certify full systems, not individual components (for example, PTC only certifies workstations, not sure about Solidworks, and I haven't heard of Inventor outside of educational anyways...)

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support...rdtesting.html

If you happen to be running a gaming card generally AMD cards have less driver issues than Nividia cards when running solidworks.

[pmangels17]

For Solidworks, I love my Lenovo in every way. Specs:
Model: Y510p
8 GB RAM
1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive
Quad Core i5 2.4 ghz (i think, my memory fails me at the moment on the exact speed)
Dual Nvidia GT 750M graphics cards (2 GB memory each)

Obviously you could get by with a bit less but you can never have enough power, and if you want a laptop you will be hard pressed to find one with a professional graphics card instead of a gaming card. For every FRC application I've needed, including full robot modeling and rendering, gaming cards do just fine, even the mobile ones I have.

If you can, definitely go with a laptop, it'll be easier to move around the shop and take to competition if you wanted to show a judge or another team.

[mman1506]

If your putting together a inexpensive computer and you are ok with something a bit adventurous might want to look at the newly released Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition, it's a 68$ processor that can be easily overclocked to 4.5-4.8 GHz. When overclocked the processor is comparable to a 379$ i7-4790K in single threaded applications like Solidworks and Inventor.